The homeless

A bum rap in the Big Apple

THIS is not the weather to be down and out in New York. Yet, compared with the complaining commuters, the homeless people bedding down on the church steps in the most luxurious stretch of Fifth Avenue are admirably stoical. A young black couple erecting a cardboard barricade against the snow say they will be warm enough, and would rather sleep rough together than be apart in the city's single-sex shelters for childless adults. On another step, Dave, a middle-aged white man homeless since his divorce, lies wrapped in blankets, reading Stephen King's death-row novel, “The Green Mile”. He says he will get a job, and a home, once his teeth are fixed. Meanwhile, he would rather brave the elements than go to the city's shelters, which he doesn't like for reasons he is too embarrassed to describe.

These people seem a world apart from the stereotypical homeless who pepper what has suddenly become one of New York's hottest political debates. Hillary Clinton, cheered on by everyone from the Reverend Al Sharpton to chat-show host Rosie O'Donnell, has accused her likely Senate-race opponent, Rudolph Giuliani, of trying to criminalise homelessness. A Jimmy Breslin column began, “Next, they'll arrest Christ and his family for being homeless.” Andrew Cuomo, Bill Clinton's secretary of housing and urban development, recently took control of the federal government's $60m in homeless funds for the city away from Mr Giuliani. For his part, New York's mayor describes his policy on the subject as “the highest form of compassion aimed at ending a cycle of dependency.”

Until last November, people seemed to have lost interest in homelessness. Compared with Washington, DC, San Francisco or even London, the panhandlers in Manhattan's main commercial and tourist areas seemed fewer, and certainly much less aggressive. People who remember the early 1990s increasingly found themselves wondering, “Where have all the homeless gone?”

Because there are no good data, it is hard to know—though part of the explanation is probably that some homeless people have moved to peripheral parts of the city. The rest have been better behaved; and that, in in-your-face New York, is the surest way to get forgotten. As part of Mr Giuliani's “quality of life” policies, in 1994 the police tore up their implicit contract with the homeless, effectively abolishing shanty communities by requiring that the homeless sleep in groups of no more than two or three, and that all evidence of their makeshift shelters be removed by dawn. Any homeless person making a nuisance, especially with persistent begging, would be arrested. This approach is being widely imitated in other big American cities, most recently Cleveland, Ohio.

But when homeless Paris Drake attacked a commuter with a brick on November 16th, public concern was suddenly reignited. “Get the Violent Crazies Off Our Streets,” thundered the tabloid Daily News. The mayor responded at once. Having arrested barely 100 homeless people in the ten months before the attack, the police took in 361 between November 23rd and January 12th.

This has drawn attention to Mr Giuliani's other policies towards the homeless. They are an extension of the “tough love” initiatives that have helped to reduce the number of New Yorkers receiving welfare by 540,000 (45%) since 1995. In 1979, New York became the first city in America to grant a guaranteed right to shelter. Mr Giuliani wants to end this, by making shelter conditional on the homeless person working.

Linking shelter to work may not be as heartless as it seems. The city will provide a job, if a private alternative is not available. And it will provide childcare for homeless mothers while they work (though a suggestion that mothers refusing to work might have their children taken into care when they are put out on to the streets has generated some hostile publicity). The requirement to work would apply only to the “able-bodied”—probably less than 20% of those in single-person shelters, and slightly more in family shelters, says a city official.

“There are two contradictory policies on the homeless,” says Mary Brosnahan, executive director of the Coalition for the Homeless. “One is to get the homeless off the street into shelters; the other would force people out of the shelters on to the streets.” She thinks a dawn police raid last week on shelters, to round up people faced with criminal charges, will further discourage the use of shelters. The city replies that it should encourage their use, by demonstrating that the police will not let them be a safe haven for criminals. According to Ms Brosnahan, a longer-term solution requires much more money for housing, particularly for the homeless who are mentally ill.

The mayor's plans to make the homeless work are currently tied up in court. Supporters of the homeless freely admit that their aim is to keep them there until Mr Giuliani is out of office. But legal delays may suit him. They allow him to go on using the radical rhetoric of tough-love welfare reform, thus impressing out-of-city voters, without actually putting more people on to the streets and so probably upsetting voters in the city.